


by the time you are Real

by Kt_fairy



Series: let the river rush in [13]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gen, M/M, Memories, Period Typical Attitudes, Personal Growth, Recovery, Trauma, rated G for the wide eyed wonder fo children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24841438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kt_fairy/pseuds/Kt_fairy
Summary: 'Observations of the Arctic, its Aquatic Fauna, and its Peoples'was not the most exciting title. But then again, James was neither natural scientist nor anthropologist, so for those with such an interest, Mr Goodsir's book might sound rapturously thrilling.Which was why he had been surprised when Alice Charlewood - who at ten years of age was of a height now to indulge in her fascination with bookshelves - came hurrying downstairs with it after supper. She held it aloft before anyone in the parlour could question her choice of book for the children, and declared that it contained Uncle James’ drawings.ORJames Fitzjames begins to come to terms with the Arctic.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Commander James Fitzjames & Lt Henry T. D. Le Vesconte
Series: let the river rush in [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1458220
Comments: 29
Kudos: 51





	by the time you are Real

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by [this online exhibition](https://ice.lindahall.org/1_scoresby.shtml) and also [ this ](https://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/news/images/Image-23.jpg) sketch by the real JFJ, who was a brilliant artist lbh.
> 
> AS ALWAYS, a hundred million thanks to the fragrant MsKingBean for all her help in making this readable, and for finally drilling the difference between 'sitting' and 'sat' into my head.

**\- 1858**

_'Observations of the Arctic, its Aquatic Fauna, and its Peoples'_ was not the most exciting title. But then again, James was neither natural scientist nor anthropologist, so for those with such an interest, Mr Goodsir's book might sound rapturously thrilling. 

Which was why he had been surprised when Alice Charlewood - who at ten years of age was of a height now to indulge in her fascination with bookshelves - came hurrying downstairs with it after supper. She held it aloft before anyone in the parlour could question her choice of book for the children, and declared that it contained Uncle James’ drawings. 

That seemed to be an exciting prospect for the two little Le Vescontes in attendance, who became almost beside themselves when their mother said she had read it. Ned was rudely evicted from the settee as the children piled around James, pleading with him to show them the pictures. 

“You are all old enough to look through a book without assistance, surely?” James asked, showing the amount of reticence needed for children to feel as if they had won a great victory when he conceded.

“It’s not the saaame, Uncle Jaaasss,” Sarah Le Vesconte wheedled, to everyone’s amusement, her grey eyes such a perfect match to her father’s that James would have relented even if he had not intended to. 

“The young lady makes a fine point,” Francis stated, smiling when James raised his eyebrows at him.

"Gets it from her mother, I daresay," Dundy grinned from where he was trying not to sprawl beside Francis on the chintz sofa, "my fine points usually come after a deal of rambling." He had returned from the second war in China only a few weeks ago, having avoided being sent to the unrest that East India Company was facing in India, and was still rather rakishly weather worn. With a nut brown tan that did little to hide how ruddy he had become thanks to the few glasses of claret he had partaken of at supper. 

“I should not dare refuse a request so well put,” James said with exaggerated formality, holding his hands out to take the book from Alice. “Or such a fine choice of reading. Thank you, Lissie.”

Alice held out the edges of her tartan pinafore as she gave playful curtsey, then hopped up on the settee next to James, picking young Henry Le Vesctone up to sit on her knee while his sister tried to scale James’ leg.

“Be careful!" Charlotte warned, ivy patterned skirts rustling as she leant forward in her chair, concern clear in her voice. "Sarah, do not climb on your uncle!"

"It's quite alright," James said, picking Sarah up to set her beside him.

No one had a look of hovering worry on their face, so James supposed it had not shown how it had taken more effort than it should for him to lift a six year old. Typhoid had invalided him home from China a year ago now; the disease weakening him so that he had hardly been able to walk down the gangplank of the ship that had brought the wounded, and had left his constitution - already stretched thin by the Arctic - so fragile that he was yet to return to his usual rude health. 

So a strain in his arms was an improvement of sorts, James thought as he set the book on his lap, tapping his fingers on the pale blue cover as he leant closer to his goddaughter. “I say Miss Charlewood, I take it you have cast your eye over this book before?”

“I have, yes,” she said brightly as she tucked her sandy curls behind her ears.

“What did you think of it?”

“I find the science to be sound, Sir James,” she said in a stately voice fit for an Admiral, sharp nose stuck in the air, which caused the Little Vescontes to giggle and Ned to bark a laugh as he leant by the mantelpiece. “And the diagrams most wonderful.”

"That may be the most concise review I have ever heard," Charlotte commented warmly, "and certainly more informative than most," which was met with a _hear hear_ from Ned. 

"Did you read it, uncle?" Henry asked, fidgeting with the buttons on his blue skeleton suit.

"I have not, no.” James said, fetching his spectacles from his pocket. The day had started to dim outside of the windows, and even though the parlour was airy and well lit, James finally knew better than to strain his eyes for the sake of vanity.

“But I did go through to look at those illustrations I provided,” James opened the book, holding his left arm close to his side so Sarah could lean against him as he flicked past the introduction. "Because… well, because I drew them, I suppose, and I wanted to see them on the page."

"Did you draw them all from what you remember?" Alice asked.

James nodded, thinking of the sketchbooks he had left wrapped in oilcloth somewhere on _Erebus,_ and were part of an iceberg by now, no doubt. "Luckily it was all very striking."

"I drew papa's ship," Sarah lisped through her missing front teeth. "And mama sent it _all_ the way to China. In the _post_!"

"Finest artwork in the Empire, my girl," Dundy declared, winking at her.

The first image plate was a colour view of Disko bay; the distant ships reflected on the deep blue waters that rippled around the uneven shore that led up to the rocky, moss covered land where an observatory was tightly nestled, its squat form odd and homely amongst the flat green tundra surrounding it.

“Now this is a place in Greenland; which is a great, snowy island that sits in between England and the entrance to the Arctic. We moored in a place called Disko bay for a while, and you see that hut --”

“An Inuit’s house!” Henry pronounced, pointing a small finger at it.

“Those are made of snow and ice,” Alice gently corrected, resting her pointed chin on Henry’s wild hair.

“And are round,” Sarah said joyfully, swinging her legs so her heels thunked lightly against the wooden frame of the settee.

“Indeed they are; carved from blocks of ice and domed like a pudding,” James explained. “No, this is an _observatory_ , where your father and I would do experiments to do with the umm - the weather, so far north. All checked over by captain Crozier, who was very much our teacher in such things.”

“I say,” Dundy twisted so he could look at Francis. “Were we good students?” 

“You certainly did the work," Francis said, his perfect innocence breaking into a playful grin when James tutted and Dundy harrumphed. “Diligence and capability itself, if my memory serves me right.”

“Should think so too,” James murmured, shooting Francis a smile before turning his attention back to the children who were having a good look at Disko bay. 

“Was it very cold there?” Alice asked. “It looks rather pleasant and green.”

“It was the summer. And in summer the Arctic can be quite mild and green, with lots of mosses and hardy plants. If I remember correctly, it was rather stifling in our observatory.” Which was just as much a surprise for James to say as it was for the children to hear. When he thought of the Arctic, it was great walls of groaning ice and brittle shingle beneath his feet, the air freezing in your chest with every breath - not a place that might become warm enough for one to strip off their coat in perfect comfort. 

“A surprise to all us newcomers to the area, that’s to be sure,” Dundy smiled as if he too were remembering their constant battle with the mosquitoes. And the delightful bounce of the thick mosses underfoot; a thing they had made the most of, not quite so naive as James always supposed they had been about their immediate future of snow and ice.

"Especially,” Dundy said, eyes wide, “with all the bergs about.”

“Icebergs!” was gasped, the enthusiasm of the children as bright and earnest as James had been when he had first laid eyes on one of those great, glimmering monuments of nature.

“Icebergs, eh? Let us see… “ James muttered as he leafed through the pages, feeling rather scholarly in his spectacles. “Here we are,” he laid the book flat, smoothing his hand over the black and white print of one of the great bergs of Baffin Bay. It dwarfed the ships that had just sailed past it - watched by a few curious seals sitting about on the sea ice - the colossal craggy tower of the berg diminishing into a low curve that rose again sharply into a spire, as elegant as any Arabic character. 

“This is an _iceberg_ ,” he said, remembering the breathless wonder he had felt when he had first seen one, and finding that, flat on the page, it did not astound quite like the bergs of his memory. “It is a mountain made wholly of ice and snow, and as white as a well iced Twelfth cake.”

There was a chorus of surprise from the two little Le Vescontes; Henry very intrigued by the mention of cake while Sarah traced the berg with her fingertips.

"Does it go down to the bottom of the ocean, uncle?" 

"It floats upon the water.”

"How?" Sarah asked, rather putting James on the spot. 

He only knew how to explain such a thing in terms of the draught of a ship’s hull and the displacement of water that it caused, and was rather stumped on how to put that to a child, so looked to the others in the room for aid.

"You remember last winter, when it snowed at Grandpapa's," Charlotte put in, speaking in her even, knowledgeable way that always won her a doting look from Dundy. "How the ponds froze, and upon breaking up the surface, little islands of snow floated about for some time, supported by the ice."

There was some sage nodding from the children, who looked to Francis when he spoke. "Some are made of such pure snow that they glow in the moonlight."

That was met with no small amount of buoyant awe from the children - Alice declaring it all " _perfectly wonderful"_ \- that brought a smile to Jame’s face. Even Ned let out a huff of surprise, half turning from where he lent against the mantle. "I say old boy, do they really?"

"They do," Francis nodded, a quiet glint of amusement in his eye.

"Good lord," Ned whispered, making a show of raising his eyebrows in surprise when he looked to Alice.

They continued to make their way through the illustrations. An image of an _Igloo,_ which had been penned by Goodsir, prompted a small demonstration of how Francis supposed they were constructed, which required every cushion in the parlour (and was going to be recreated for the other young Le Vescontes on a grand scale at home, judging by their parent’s enjoyment). Then there was a great discussion over why the Killer Whale was thusly coloured, while Alice inspected a rather frivolous illustration of a pod of those creatures shadowing the ships when they had sailed through Lancaster Sound.

The drawings had been rendered with so much care to try and exorcise the vast bleakness that had been burned into James’ mind. It was peculiar to see them like this, in some cases printed in stark black and white, others the flat shades of woodblock colours; all carefully dated and neatly sorted into that time before tragedy had ripped through the expedition, leaving jagged wounds in its wake.

He had been amazed by it once, the peculiar clean beauty of the Arctic - a place that drew men back again and again with its countless wonders. But the dull, grinding bleakness of King William Island tainted all that, and James had thrown himself into seven years of war and duty, and into making a go of it with Francis, rather than trying to free the beauty from the nightmare.

An afternoon spent encouraging the curiosity and fascination his dear friends’ children would not fill him with that same wonder again. That was long gone. But he remembered his amazement and, for once, felt no guilt, nor did he taste the iron tang of dread. The Arctic had been, and always would be, a strange and beautiful place, as impersonal and cruel as nature had every right to be.

It was a comforting realisation to come to just as Alice turned the page. James was met with carefully detailed diagrams of those wonderfully peculiar, minuscule sea creatures that had been discovered in droves, nearly half of them bearing an acknowledgement of Graham’s part in the discoveries.

James was struck by the memory, and felt a fool that he had not foreseen this. This book was all memories, and for every glorious, beautiful one, there would be far more that stung.

James hesitated over Graham’s name, thinking of all those times he had hauled up buckets and nets of blubbers for Goodsir to pour over, before taking a deep breath, and turning back to the children as he opened the page wide.

"These creatures were pulled up from the far deep. No one knew they existed before we caught them, and are so small they can only be seen clearly by looking through a microscope, which is a special magnifying glass." James paused, thinking of the small, curious crowd of men who had gathered around the microscope in sick bay to view these tiny beasts of the deep - most of whom had not lived to see England again. "Nets and buckets had to be lowered right down to the seafloor to collect them-- ”

“You and papa?” Henry asked quietly.

Dundy stood, squeezing the hand Charlotte held out to him as he came to sit beside Sarah, reaching out to heft Henry into his lap when the boy attempted to clamber over everyone to reach him. “Graham, a good friend to us both, collected them,” he said, then laughed to himself. “Often with a cigar in his mouth.” 

“A cigar!” Sarah cried, tipping her head back to smile up at her father.

“We were all frightful rakes, my dear,” Dundy sighed as he lay his arm along the back of the sofa, fingers resting on James’ shoulder. “Which your Uncle James allowed quite freely.”

“Oh, now!”

“You did,” Dundy grinned. “And a merry bunch we were because of it.”

“We were, rather,” James nodded, smoothing out the side of the page.

“Strange to think it,” Dundy pondered, smoothing Henry’s hair as the boy tucked himself against his father’s chest, heavy lidded and loose limbed with that sudden exhaustion that came up on children. “There were some very good times,” he nodded towards the book, “and some good things came from it.”

A murmur of agreement went around the room, and James’ eyes flicked to Francis quite of their own accord. They were well past such a contrivance, but James was in a strange mood; sentimental with a roughness about its edges. Which could only put him in mind of Francis, who barely spared James a glance in return even as that telling flush bloomed faintly on his cheeks. 

Dundy poking James on the shoulder brought his attention back to the book on his knees, James running his fingers down the edge of the page.

“This is a good thing,” Alice said carefully, her hand curling against James’ sleeve. “Sitting together, looking at... learning about marvellous things. I think.”

“Quite right,” James said gently, patting her hand as he closed the book.

  
  


* ***** *

There was a faint sheen of rain on the wide street down below the drawing room window. With every lamppost that was eked into life, a nebulous golden glow spread out over the smooth pavement and turned the dark cobblestones into strange, compelling shapes.

James did not make a habit of watching Regent’s park be lit up at night - he was not yet one of those old naval captains who inspected the world as if he was still aboard ship - but he was in no mood to sit beside the fire, nor to answer letters. Nor for staring blankly at the sketchbook that he had barely touched since they had come home from the Crimea. So here he was, sitting sideways on the not often used window seat - back to the wall and feet on the cushion, a blanket laid over him to keep the twilight chill away from his aching scars and sore joints - and watched the lamplighter at his work, whistling as he went.

The sound of the door opening and measured footsteps had James rolling his head to the side, knocking the drawn curtain out of the way with the back of his hand so he could look up at Francis when he came to stand at the window. 

“You have come upon me while I gaze out of the window, a picture of brooding.”

“There is something of those Brontë books you like about you,” Francis agreed mildly, frowning out at the darkened street before turning to sit. James drew his feet out of the way before tucking them under Francis’ thigh, throwing some of the blanket over his lap. “You aren’t about to burn the house down, are you?”

“I should hope not, that was the mad wife kept in the attic,” James said, smiling at the consternation that passed over Francis’ face. 

“No wonder she set the house afire, if the man locked her in an attic.”

“Quite,” James murmured, blinking into the darkness as he looked back out of the window. “I am letting this afternoon settle before bed, so I am not kept up half the night mulling over it.”

Francis hummed, laying his hand on James’ leg. “I did not worry when I saw Alice with the book, but I know how these things sneak up on a man.”

“I am - yes…. some things did, rather.”

“I know,” Francis said gently.

“They are not bad memories in themselves, simply..." James thought a moment, tongue tripping over gaps between his surviving teeth. "Happy ones become melancholy so easily. They are good memories that I should treasure. I am glad, I suppose, that I can stand to think of those times at all now. There was a point where it would only bring nightmares.”

“Both of the polar regions are the source of good memories to me. Some of my finest moments, both as a man and as a scientist, occurred at the poles. I have met most of those that I hold dear because of my work in those places," Francis explained steadily. "And yet, there are clear moments when I was terrified from well before our expedition which... my memories of most of that are hazy, at best. Which was -I hardly had the most pleasant outlook…" Francis gave a self deprecating smile, and James reached for his hand. 

It had all been a horrible time for Francis. There had been no joyful wonder or moments of ebullience - just a slow slip into darkness of mood and outlook, as well as the whiskey bottle. It was all well and good for James to think, in hindsight, about how he should have been kinder and maintained his patience, rather than let the biting looks and remarks, born of an unhappiness that James had been able to see in Francis, cut deeper than did credit to a man like him; making life miserable for them both. 

There was nothing to be done about that now - Francis would not like him to be sorry for it, but he was.

"I can hear you dwelling on things,” Francis murmured, threading their fingers together. “I had some fine time’s with Tom Blanky, don’t you worry. There were some bright moments before it all went to hell."

"Such as the time I tipped right out of that Kayak in Disko bay?" 

"Maybe," Francis shrugged, and James could tell he was smiling even without looking at him.

" _Maybe_ ** _,_** " James parroted back, pressing his toes against Francis’ thigh. 

"But it has been a constant in my life. The Polar regions, that is. It has been a source of great joy, and great fascination to me, and I am glad you can… that it does not remain all horrors for you."

"For a while, I simply did not like to remember the happier times," James sighed. "It felt disingenuous to how it all ended."

Francis laughed. "Disingenuous?"

" _Francis -_ "

"No, I know," he squeezed James’ fingers. "It is better to think of our friends in happier times. That is the rather twee wisdom old age brings."

James grinned. "That pearl shall be embroidered on samplers from here to Bath."

Francis huffed a laugh, shooting a look at James. "God forbid."

_________________________________________

_“You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”_

_\- The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams Bianco_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Instead of two people in a room talking about things, it's now eight!! Look at me, go!


End file.
